Camilla Schofield

Dr Camilla Schofield is Associate Professor in Modern History and Research Director for the School of History. She studied history at Yale University, Cambridge University and Washington University in St. Louis.

Schofield uses the study of history to deepen public understanding of contemporary political issues. Her areas of interest include migration and anti-immigrant politics, racial discrimination and inequalities, Black British history and Britain's colonial legacies. For this work, she has received a number of prizes and fellowships, including the AHRC Early Career Leadership Fellowship, the British Academy Rising Star Award, the Hans Gatzke Prize at Yale University and the Fox International Fellowship at Cambridge University. 

Schofield's key publications include the book Enoch Powell and the Making of Postcolonial Britain (CUP, 2013) - which has been described as the 'definitive account' of Enoch Powell - and Global White Nationalism: From Apartheid to Trump (MUP, 2020), as well as articles in the Journal of British Studies, Twentieth Century British History and American Journal of Political Science. She is currently writing a book on the politics of whiteness in modern Britain.  

Schofield contributes to wider public understanding of British political history through her work in media and the arts. She presented a three-part historical documentary series Britain's Fascist Thread which aired on Radio4 in 2021. And, in 2022, returned to Radio4 as presenter and advisor for another three-part series Britain's Communist Thread. In both of these, she challenges the view that fascism and communism are essentially foreign to British culture and politics, by exploring the indigenous roots of political radicalism in modern Britain. In 2020, Schofield began working with the playwright Nnenna Samson Abosi and the award-winning youth threatre company SPID to develop a radio play on Black experiences of police harassment and the rise of Black Power in London in the 1970s. This aired at the Brighton Fringe Festival in 2021. Linked to this, she worked with The National Archives UK to build publically available educational tools for Key Stage 3-5 students and teachers on the history of police harassment and anti-racist activism in Britain. 

She is interested in supervising PhD research on a wide range of topics relating to the social and political history of modern Britain, including citizenship and nationalism, the 'white working class', popular individualism, postcolonial Britain, racism and racial formations, and the impact of global and domestic migration.  

Her research interests include British political history, histories of migration, race and racialisation, whiteness, the British Empire and decolonisation, and citizenship and nationaliism.